A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Thursday, January 28, 2016

January 28, 2011 was the first Friday after the outbreak of the Egyptian Uprising, and became a crucial turning point. Protesters called for nationwide demonstrations, clashes were widespread.The Muslim Brotherhood announced it was joining the protests.

By evening the Army rolled into Cairo, and the demonstrators welcomed them, the beginning of the "Army and People are one hamd" myth which would prove a fantasy. Five years ago today, so much seemed possible.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

One of the most famous institutions in the Middle East in World War I, though its work was largely secret at the time, was the famous Arab Bureau. This small but growing section of the British Military Intelligence section in Cairo would eventually count among its members T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, David Hogarth, Aubrey Herbert, Herbert Garland, George Lloyd (later Lord Lloyd), Stewart Newcombe, Leonard Woolley, and others.

The Bureau's creation was the brainchild of Sir Mark Sykes (later of Sykes-Picot fame) who, after a tour of the Middle East from Egypt to India had ben impressed by the facts that Germany and the Ottomans were doing a better job than Britain in propaganda to the Muslim world outside of India.

In my earlier posts on the Cairo Intelligence Section, we discussed the rivalries between the Indian Government in Delhi and Simla and India Office in London on the one hand, and the Foreign Office and War Office on the other. India was resistant to putting the Arab Bureau in Cairo, since India wanted to maintain control of the Mesopotamia Campaign and its influence on the Arab tribes in the Gulf.

After bureaucratic maneuvering, a compromise was reached: Gilbert Clayton would have direct responsibility for the Bureau bu i would report not to the British military leadership (Archibald Murray) alone, but directly to the Foreign Office (via the High Commissioner for Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon), and he Governor General of the Sudan/Sirdar of he Egyptian Army, Reginald Wingate. The confusing chain of command masked the fact that Clayton's intelligence section had direct control. David Hogarth, the archaeologist, an occasional spy, became Director, with Kinahan Cornwallis as Deputy Director

The Bureau and its secret intelligence publication The Arab Bulletin would be major players in the remaining years of the Great War.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Today's fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Egyptian Revolution was marked quietly, with security forces banning demonstrations; many of the activist of 2011 are now in jail. While President Sisi praised the Revolution, the government normally speaks of "the Resolutions of January 25 and June 30," bracketing the 2011 uprising with the 2013 revolt against Muhammad Morsi. Also, more attention is being de oted to Police Day, also on January 25. (For background, see this post.)

As telling an image as possible is the contrast between Tahrir then and now:

Friday, January 22, 2016

The protests have spread throughout much of he country's hinterland after spreading from Kasserine where one demonstrator was electrocuted last week. President Beji Caid Essebsi has expressed sympathy and promised to work to improve job prospects.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

There has been a lot of publicity this week about the destruction of what is believed to be Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, Deir Mar Elia (St. Elijah) near Mosul, by ISIS. It is, like all of ISIS' destruction of ancient sites, a barbarous act. But what may be missed by those who read only the headlines, is that it was destroyed in August-September 2014. Iraqi Christian sources from the Assyrian and Chaldean churches throughout last year. What is new is the publication by the Associated Press of DigitalGlobe satellite photos that confirm that the ruined walls of the monastery have been obliterated. It provides a dramatic visual, but the destruction had been reported long before.

Mar Elia was founded as an Assyrian (Nestorian) monastery in the AD 590s. Much of the structure was built from the 11th century onward, and destroyed in 1743 by the Persian Nadir Shah. Is ruins, though roofless, were cared for by the Chaldean Catholic Church and was a site for pilgrimages. The ruins were used as a military base by Saddam Hussein, and during the US Occupation a Catholic chaplain celebrated Masses on the ancient altar.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

In this month that marks the fifth anniversary of the success of the Tunisian Revolution some may feel a sense of déjà vu. Today Tunisia announced a curfew in the western provincial town of Kasserine, which has been the scene of demonstrations by unemployed young graduates, some of whom have attempted suicide. It inevitably reminds us of the suicide of Mohammad Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid that sparked the uprising.

Though a dictatorship has been replaced with a democracy and has even seen a peaceful transfer of power, for young graduates without job prospects, things have not improved, and the anniversary has underscored that irony.

You may recall that President Michel Suleiman's term ended in May 2014 and Lebanon has failed to elect a President since. (In the absence of a President, which has been a frequent issue in recent years, the Prime Minister acts as President.) In 2014, Parliament (which elects the President by a two-thirds vote) failed to elect a President due to differences between the March 8 and March 14 movement.

Lately efforts to resolve the situation have revived, though the constitutionality of the present Parliament is itself debatable since it extended its own term. The Maronite Patriarch has sought to encourage a common candidate (the President must be a Maronite).

Lately there had been some talk of naming March 8 supporter Suleiman
Frangieh (grandson and namesake of the President in the early 1970s), an
old rival of Geagea's, though what persuaded Geagea to endorse another
old enemy, ‘Aoun.

It is still unclear whether Geagea's move will throw sufficient support behind ‘Aoun to actually elect him but once again it is a reminder that in Lebanon, bitter enemies can become allies overnight. (Walid Jumblatt can change sides even faster.)

Friday, January 15, 2016

I like to think there is some small, eccentric subset of my readers who have been asking themselves, "why is he spending so much time on history and current events and neglecting posts on obscure linguistics of dead Middle Eastern languages?" I even like to think that a subset of that subset has been mumbling, "You haven't had a single post on Punic since the summer of 2013! " Then, you may recall, we discussed the question of whether spoken Punic (the language of Ancient Carthage) survived until the coming of Arabic.

Actually, maybe none of you are thinking that. But not being a linguistics expert, I have to refer you to someone who is, Lameen Souag over at Jabal al-Lughat, who also deserves congratulations for his 10th anniversary of blogging. I also recently linked to his posts about the officialization of Tamazight in Algeria.

In this particular link. "Raisins from Carthage to Siwa," Souag, citing a Facebook post, notes that the standard word in Tamazight dialects for "raisin" is usually either a Berber phrase meaning "dried grapes" or is a loan word from Arabic, but that in Djerba in Tunisia, Zuwara and other places in western Libya — and, curiously, at Siwa, the only Berber enclave in Egypt —the root in use is found in a late inscription in Neo-Punic. The root is also documented in Hebrew, as is often how Punic and Phoenician inscriptions are deciphered. (Hebrew, Phoenician, Punic and Canaanite are extremely similar languages.)

Souag, who has written a book on Siwi and its relations to other Berber languages, notes that Carthaginian influence, and Neo-Punic, never extended east of central Libya, so what explains the presence in Siwa of all places? He answers:

The answer is simple, as I discuss in the introduction to my book Berber and Arabic in Siwa (Egypt):
modern Siwi seems to derive mainly from a Berber variety spoken much
further west, which reached Siwa only during the Middle Ages. There
very probably was a Berber language spoken in Siwa before that, but if
so, it has left very few traces.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--
Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

—William Wordsworth on the French Revolution

Five years ago today, on Friday, January 14, 2011, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunis for exile. The first of the revolts we came to call Arab Spring had succeeded. Ordinary people, like the iconic man with the baguette in the photo above, had toppled an authoritarian regime. Everything seemed possible: the "Jasmine Revolution" was already being echoed elsewhere. Wordsworth's words on the French Revolution seemed appropriate.

But the French Revolution led to the Terror, to Bonaparte, and to the return of the Bourbons, who had "learned nothing and forgotten nothing." The second Arab Awakening divided Libya, subjected Syria, Iraq, and Yemen to civil wars, and saw Egypt return to a military-backed regime. The only good news, and it is imperfect, is where it all began: Tunisia has seen free elections and peaceful transfer of power, despite persisting radical violence.

The lessons of the last five years will be studied for generations. For good or ill the old Middle East is gone, and a new one still emerging. The hopes of peaceful change were disappointed, except in Tunisia. The vibrant excitement of 2011 has been disappointed, and in some ways it seems much longer than five years.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

In January 1916, following the withdrawal of British and Allied forces from Gallipoli, the British reshuffled the command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and the military force in Egypt. At the same time, the intelligence structure in Cairo was reorganized with the creation of the famous Arab Bureau. This post will deal with the command change; a later post will address the Arab Bureau. You may want to review my posts of a little over a year ago on the British Intelligence Section in Cairo and the complicated chain of command, as well as the new men assigned there.

With the withdrawal from Gallipoli, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force's sole remaining front was at Salonika in Greece. Overall command returned to Cairo, with General Sir Archibald Murray taking over command from Sir Charles Monro in early January. Murray would continue to be responsible for the logistics of the Salonika front, but a French general took over operational command. The residual British force that had remained in Egypt was left, for the moment, under the command of Sir John Maxwell, but it was responsible only for the Senussi campaign; in March the Force in Egypt would be merged with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force to form the new Egyptian Expeditionary Force under Murray's command; in April Maxwell would be sent to Ireland to deal with the Easter Rising.

Murray trading card

"Archie" Murray arrived in Egypt after a stint as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but like each CIGS who served under Lord Kitchener's War Office, he was soon replaced. A veteran of the Zulu and Second Boer Wars, he began the Great War as Chief of Staff to Sir John French on the Western Front. Well hear a lot about Murray over the coming year.

Murray does not fare well in David Lean's 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, which portrays him (via actor Donald Wolfit) as irascible, skeptical of the prospects of the Arab Revolt, and contemptuous of Lawrence. In reality he backed the Revolt after being persuaded, and he and Lawrence got along. But the film has probably formed most people's view of the period. Murray was not greatly successful and after two failures to take Gaza he would be replaced by Edmund Allenby,

And this year, Algerian Imazighen have some good news for the new year; a proposed constitutional change that would make Tamazight "a national and official language" alongside Arabic. An Academy of Amazigh Language is also promised, perhaps to standardize various existing languages into a national language.

In 2004 a constitutional change made Tamazight a "national" language but not an "official" one. Arabic is still defined as "the national and official language of the state," while Tamazight is "also a national and official language." The addition of "official" is new.

Yes, Algeria changes constitutions frequently, and President Bouteflika is ailing and there are rumors his brother is calling the shots, but this is yet another example of the growing assertiveness and recognition of the Amazigh role in contemporary North Africa.

Friday, January 8, 2016

A century ago tonight Britain's Gallipoli adventure ended. The decision to evacuate was made the previous November. Beginning in December, Britain had been evacuating its troops, under cover of darkness and keeping up artillery cover to distract the Turks. By the new year 1916 the beaches at Anzac and Suvla were cleared, and troops remained only at Cape Helles. On the evening of January 8, they too began embarking under cover of darkness. By 1:15 am on January 9, the troops were assembled on the evacuation beaches. Guns and ammunition dumps were prepared to be blown up and other supplies burned.

At 2;30 am the 13th Division troops were mostly embarked from Gully Beach but there were insufficient boats for the Headquarters Staff and a storm was rising, so Division Commander then-Major General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, with his staff and the beach pickets, had to make their way overland to W Beach instead. Carrying a valise and stumbling through underbrush, Maude an his party were an hour late reaching the beach where the last lighter was preparing to leave.

Maude, the later conqueror of Baghdad, came to be known as the last man on the beach on Gallipoli, though some of his staff or the naval landing party may have followed him.

As this page notes, one of his staff composed a parody of the verse "Come Into the Garden, Maud" for the occasion:

Come into the lighter, Maude,For the fuse has long been lit,Come into the lighter, Maude,And never mind your kit,I’ve waited here an hour or more,The news that your march is o’er.The sea runs high, but what care I,It’s better to be sick than blown sky high,So jump into the lighter, Maude,The allotted time is flown,Come into the lighter, Maude,I’m off in the launch alone,I’m off in the lighter a-lone.

The once powerful twin sister of the last Shah of Iran, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, has died in exile at age 96, Princess Ashraf wielded considerable power during her brother's reign, served as an Iranian diplomat, and played a role in persuading her brother to agree to support the US-British backed Operation Ajax counter-coup in 1953, leading critics of the monarchy to compare her to Lady Macbeth. A spokesman said she died in Europe but for security reasons did not name he country.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Those Eastern Christians who follow the Julian Calendar will celebrate Christmas this Thursday, January 7.Since 2009, I have annually noted the rich Coptic traditions of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt,
which expands the couple of verses in the Gospel of Matthew, by
offering a detailed story of a three-year sojourn and visits up and down
the Nile. More recently I've added a map and some pictures, and fixed a few
errors. As always, despite the obvious apocryphal nature of these
tales, I intend to respect the charm of the stories while noting some of
the improbabilities. My revised and illustrated version:

Since we're in between Western Christmas and
Eastern Christmas, I thought it might be a useful time to call to your
attention the extremely detailed traditions Egypt's Copts maintain
about the Holy Family and the Flight into Egypt. There is hardly a
Christian church in Egypt — and there are some mosques, too, since
Jesus and Mary are highly venerated in Islam — that doesn't claim that
Jesus, Mary and Joseph dropped by for a while. They must have been
constantly on the move to have covered so much ground, but you can't
build up a good pilgrimage trade if you don't stop frequently.

Now,
the Flight into Egypt gets only a couple of verses in the Bible and is
only mentioned in one Gospel, Matthew, (Matthew 2, 13-14 and 19) so the extremely detailed
accounts of the Coptic stories have more to do with pious elaboration —
or pilgrimage tourism — than history, but the stories can be quite
charming. Some are based on an apocryphal Armenian infancy gospel, some
on local traditions, etc. The Coptic traditions hold that the Holy
Family spent three years in Egypt.

I am shamelessly cribbing this from Chapter XXXI of the late Otto Meinardus' Christian Egypt Ancient and Modern,
(Cairo: AUC Press, 1965; Revised Edition 1977). Meinardus was a major
figure in Coptic studies; German-born, he wrote mostly in English or
French, taught at the American University in Cairo, and was an ordained
Lutheran pastor. (Judge for yourself what Martin Luther would have
thought of some of these stories.) He died in 2005. But I have to
condense all the details considerably; his chapter runs over 40 pages.
There's also a detailed online site, with pictures (text approved personally by Coptic Pope Shenouda, they say), for those interested. And tours are available;this site also offers a travelogue.

It
seems the Holy Family traveled with a midwife named Salome who isn't
mentioned in the Gospel but plays a role in the Coptic stories. Instead
of heading straight to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, they seem to
have zigzagged to the Plain of Jericho, then Ashkelon, then Hebron (at
least according to the various churches and monasteries situated in
those places), then proceeded to enter Egypt via the Land of Goshen, en
route to the town of Bilbays. Along the way they had an encounter with a
dragon in a cave, and were approached by wild lions, but of course
they all bowed down to the Baby Jesus. At Bilbays they rested under a
large tree, which was venerated in the Middle Ages by both Muslims and
Christians as the Virgin's Tree, which stood until 1850. Then they
headed to Samannud, where there is a church on the site of a well
blessed by Jesus. (Early Christian apocryphal infancy Gospels, as well
as the Qur'an, have Jesus talking while still in the cradle.) Then they
detoured northward to the Mediterranean coast at Burollos, stopping
there according to the monks of the place. Then, perhaps at Basus or
Sakha in Gharbiyya (Meinardus speculates on the place), Jesus left his
footprint on a stone.

Needless to say, they could not
ignore the Wadi Natrun, the Coptic version of Mount Athos, where the
four great monasteries of the Desert Fathers still stand (but of course
didn't then as Christianity hadn't been founded yet), though why they
were wandering in the desert instead of the delta in those days isn't
explained. Passing by from a distance, Jesus said to his mother, "Know O
my Mother, that in this desert there shall live many monks, ascetes
and spiritual fighters, and they shall serve God like angels."
(Apparently Mary would have known what a "monk" was, though it's hard
to know why.) Anyway, you can ask the monks if you doubt any of this.

Even
though Cairo wasn't there yet, you know Cairo isn't going to let all
these other towns have a claim and not find some of its own, don't you?
First they went to On, the ancient Heliopolis, not on the site of the
modern suburb of that name but on the site of Matariyya. There Jesus
took Joseph's staff, dug a well, and planted the staff, which grew into a
tree which became a goal of pilgrimage and was venerated by Muslims as
well as Christians. (The Qur'an has a story of Mary resting under a
palm tree, and this and the Matariyya tree became conflated in later
folklore. The Matariyya tree is a sycamore.) The present tree, still
venerated, is alleged to be grown from the shoot of an older tree:

The Virgin's Tree, Matariyya

Harat Zuwaila Church of the Virgin

From there, the Holy Family went to a site
where, centuries later, the Harat Zuwaila quarter of Cairo would rise;
the Church of the Virgin there is one of the oldest in Cairo proper, and
the convent has a well blessed by Jesus.

(If you're
wondering why I haven't mentioned their stop in the Fortress of Babylon,
in a church many tourists visit today, it's because they stopped there
only after their tour of Upper Egypt. Trust me, it's coming.)

Next
they went to Ma‘adi, today an elite southern suburb of Cairo, and
attended a synagogue. Joseph got to know some Nile boatmen, who offered
to take them to Upper Egypt. (You're wondering how an exiled carpenter
and family fleeing from King Herod can afford all this Grand Tour?
Don't be so cynical: the legend has it covered: using the gold,
frankincense and myrrh brought by the Magi.)

I'm going
to condense a bit here since every Church of St. Mary up the Nile seems
to mark a site where the boat stopped and they visited a well or a
palm tree. But since Upper Egypt remains one of the more Christian
parts of the country, they couldn't skip such Christian centers as
Sammalout, Asyut, al-‘Ashnmunein, or the great monastery known as Deir
al-Muharraq.

One of the legendary sub-stories here
deserves telling, though. Up near al-‘Ashmunein, two brigands who had
been pursuing the Holy Family since Matariyya (must be the gold,
frankincense and myrrh again) tried to rob them. They grabbed Jesus and
Mary cried, and one of the robbers repented, and they left them. And —
as any folklorist should have figured out by now — these were the same
two thieves, including the same Good Thief, who would be crucified
alongside Jesus! How could it be otherwise?

Deir al-Muharraq Today

The
constant travels were finally relieved when the Holy Family were taken
in by a devout Jew and lived for six months (and ten days: I told you
the stories are detailed) at the site of the Monastery of Deir
al-Muharraq, south
of al-Qusiya. The monks of the monastery say it was the first monastery
in Egypt, built just after the arrival of Saint Mark as the Apostle of
Egypt. If you doubt that, take it up with the monks, not me. Or with
the monks at St. Anthony's in the Eastern Desert, which is usually seen
as the earliest.)

Abu Sarga Church Crypt

Then
the angel came to Joseph and told him it was safe to go back to
Palestine. (That part actually is in the Gospel of Matthew, unlike
everything else in this post.) They stopped at pretty much every Coptic
village that would ever have a Church of the Virgin on their way back
down the Nile, and feeling they had not yet done enough for future
Cairo tourism, they stopped inside the Roman fortress known as Babylon
and, perhaps having run out of gold and frankincense, stayed in a cave
that is today the crypt of the church of Saint Sergius (Abu Sarga),
conveniently adjacent to the Coptic Museum and included on many Cairo
tours.

I hope I don't sound too cynical here: the
stories are charming and are clearly a pious attempt to elaborate on a
brief reference in the Gospel in order to make the Christian link to
Egypt more tangible to believers. On the other hand, the sense that
every Church of Saint Mary in Egypt actually sheltered the Virgin and
Child seems a bit credulous.

I hope my Coptic friends
recognize that I am helping spread knowledge of your tradition, even if
I may not accept every detail as historically attested. I'd really
like to know more about that dragon.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Due to rain in the Middle East, many social media users posted New Year's photos of rainbows in Jordan, Gaza, and Lebanon. I thought it might be an excuse to make my first post of the new year an optimistic one. But January 1 was a holiday so I didn't post. And then the region went to hell in a handbasket over the weekend.

The spiraling escalation of the Saudi-Iranian crisis, beginning with the Saudi execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, the subsequent attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and the breaking of relations has happened so quickly that there is cause for concern that the situation could spin out of control. At a minimum, hope for some sort of peace deal in Syria is likely to be a casualty, and the GCC could escalate the proxy war in Yemen. The lack of a common land border makes direct ground clashes unlikely, but in addition to he proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, naval tensions between the two countries could threaten the security of tanker traffic in the Gulf.

Although predictably, much of the analysis focuses on the sectarian angle, seeing the Saudi-Iranian rivalry in Sunni-Shi‘ite terms. That isn't wrong, given Iran's revolutionary enthusiasm as a protector of Shi‘ites everywhere, and Saudi Arabia's claim to be a defender of Sunni orthodoxy, but it implies an inexorable rivalry that is not historically the case. A more productive analysis may be to see this as a function of the dramatic change in Saudi policy over the past year. What was once the most cautious of countries has become assertive in the extreme, some would say even reckless.

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of The Middle East Journal. He also blogs. His latest posting summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly."— Gary Sick, Gary's Choices

"Since we’re not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does Tunisian media, I’ll just point you over here. It’s a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."— alle, Maghreb Politics Review

"I’ve followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institute’s blog since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense."— davidroberts at The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious Middle East Journal, wrote an interesting 'Backgrounder' on the Berriane violence at his Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . ."— kal, The Moor Next DoorThis great video of Nasser posted on Michael Collins Dunn’s blog (which is one of my favorites incidentally) ...— Qifa Nabki